He was the most prestigious philosopher of his generation: he spread charisma and his ideas about existentialism (being in the world, ‘Dasein’) and its ideas. “pristine semantics” They caused more than one student to commit suicide after listening to him in his famous seminars. His obsession with the renewal of the university as an institution, and indeed of all of Germany, led him to support the university. national socialist ideas and accepting the position of rector in Freiburg during Hitler’s time in power.
He read Kant at the age of 14 and his brightest student. Jewish woman narrowly escaped He managed to exile himself from the Nazi clutches of the Gurs camp to New York and became one of the most groundbreaking philosophers of the 20th century. He wrote ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ and introduced the concept of ‘the banality of evil’ while reporting for ‘The New Yorker’. Adolf Eichmann’s trial in JerusalemThis earned him the hostility of the Zionist community, which viewed him as a traitor for revealing the collaboration of some Jews during Nazism.
A forbidden and contradictory passion
He was 18 years old and she was 34 years old. and two children when they met. The secret love between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger is one of those chapters in European history that has just about everything: two of the 20th century’s most powerful intellectuals, Nazism, a tumultuous and forbidden passion, a world war, inspiring lessons in philosophy. …But perhaps how complex and contradictory What is it or why does Heidegger stay here? A scar in German public lifeHis story is not one of the best known.
“No one could tell it well,” says Miquel Esteve (Tarragona, 1969), who took on the challenge of constructing this story from their meeting in 1924 until Heidegger’s death in 1976. ‘Worldless love’ Navona recently released it in Spanish and Catalan.
“So far the closest thing that can bring us to their relationship is the letter Herder published five years ago, but many of Heidegger’s letters are missing because” his wife Elfriede was very jealous“Esteve, who is passionate about European philosophy and is very generous with secondary characters in the novel, such as Karl Jaspers, explains:
‘Love without Earth’ recreates a paradise marked by ‘Love Without Earth’ Those who have come and gone over the decades Beyond the lustful beginnings at the Marburg faculty, Esteve is primarily interested in the rapprochement that Heidegger and Arendt had in their mature years, after the defeat of Nazism. After the liquidation of Auschwitz and Heidegger. They last saw each other in 1975, shortly before Arendt’s heart attack. Six years ago he wrote a public congratulatory letter ‘Martin Heidegger turns eighty’.
“How could it be?”
“Arendt is magnificent, ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ is more relevant and timely than ever. a very modern woman, above many current thinkers. It is understandable that he would devote himself to a relationship of admiration with Heidegger, a man of monstrous academic, intellectual and personal charm. But because he is Jewish, I forgive him for his support for National Socialism. She was a strong woman who narrowly escaped death and at the same time did not tremble when it came to criticizing her own people… For me, writing this story satisfied the need for brutal criticism. I answer myself: how can it be?”explains Esteve.
Some biographers of Arendt have pointed out that her being an orphan (her father died of syphilis when she was young) may have had something to do with her falling in love with such a great father figure. physical and intellectual connection. Although the novel serves to understand that this relationship was not exactly equal: Martin used Hannah as a reader and discussed ideas and drafts with her. Arendt could never trust him as a reader and wrote ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ almost in secret.
He is a incorrigible solipsistAn intellectual so engrossed in his ideas that he was unaware of where the Nazi regime was heading. “His famous ‘Letter on humanism’ “It was a kind of public repentance, but it was so philosophical that three people understood it,” says Esteve, who finds the relationship between the two extremely important. “totally sexist”. “He realized that he was very obedient. “Over the years, as they got older, they became much more docile.” Esteve argues that Heidegger was never an anti-Semite. Besides Arendt, he had another lover named Elisabeth Blochmann, who was Jewish.
Journey to the origins of Messkirch
“I am a great reader of Heidegger. When you finish reading, you become a completely different person, it dries your heart out.” confesses Esteve. “Reading Arendt gives a completely different experience, it is a pure hymn that creates hope in people, it revitalizes people.”
Esteve, great European philosophy and history enthusiast, is an economist by training. He worked as a consultant in Barcelona until one day, stressed and frustrated, he returned to his hometown of Móra la Nova and took the reins of the family business. “25 years ago I left everything, I became alienated.” Today he works in the field (devoted himself to agriculture) peach, orange and oil) and combines this with math classes and a writing career.
While researching ‘Love Without World’, he went to the university where Heidegger taught and also visited the famous ‘Wizard of Meskirch’ hermitage next to the Black Forest forests, where his hut of thought still stands and where his tomb is located. . . “Since Freiburg is Germany’s greenest and most left-wing city after Berlin, the story between Heidegger and Arendt remains taboo. People talk about him in small talk, but on an intellectual level he is greatly admired.“As his grandson and executor Arnulf Heidegger commented on more than one occasion, we eagerly await the unpublished works of the German thinker that continue to be published and will come to light in the coming years,” he explains.